A coalition of Texas groups have come together this summer to launch two new efforts intended to help residents access legal abortion care and to communicate more broadly about Texans' families, their lives, and their reproductive decisions.

A coalition of Texas groups have come together this summer to launch two new efforts intended to help residents access legal abortion care and to communicate more broadly about Texans’ families, their lives, and their reproductive decisions.

A joint effort between NARAL Pro-Choice Texas and the Lilith Fund, NeedAbortion.org is a one-stop clearinghouse for facts about where to get an abortion in a tumultuous legal landscape, in which clinics close or sustain with every new court decision; it also has information about how Texas’ growing web of anti-choice laws affect people who need the procedure.

Illuminate RJ is another NARAL collaboration, this time with the Texas Freedom Network and abortion provider Amy Hagstrom Miller’s new nonprofit project, Shift. It’s an art and activist project meant to tackle abortion stigma and reproductive justice issues.

It’s a creative—rather than expressly political—approach, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas Executive Director Heather Busby told RH Reality Check. It’s a way for Texans to talk about a full spectrum of experiences with reproductive issues with personal, artistic expressions “instead of chants and slogans and protest signs.”

Poet Sonya Renee is the featured artist at Friday’s kick-off event in Austin, which will also include an art installation of cut-out paper birds decorated by Texas reproductive justice activists.

Illuminate RJ’s birds echo the soaring avians of the Repeal Hyde Art Project, but they’re specifically mockingbirds—the state bird of Texas. And those mockingbirds will make appearances across Texas in the coming weeks and months, as activists launch new “pop-up” art events around the state.

“I am absolutely confident that if Republicans try to defund Planned Parenthood in a government spending bill at the end of September, Democrats will unite against it,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the likely next Democratic minority leader in the Senate, told reporters Thursday.

But when many Democrats speak out in defense of Planned Parenthood these days, they try to keep the focus on Planned Parenthood’s merits and avoid discussing the videos that opponents are using to attack the organization. This is particularly true of 2016 presidential candidates, who either say they haven’t watched the videos or concede that they are “disturbing,” as Hillary Clinton did Wednesday.

A growing number of Democrats have started bucking that trend, pushing to discredit the Center for Medical Progress for its misleading videos and shadytactics and put the attack group on defense.

Perhaps the most potent call-out of CMP came in a Wednesday Senate floor speech by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

“Attacks on Planned Parenthood are a concerted attack on access to safe, legal abortion services in this country. Make no mistake about it,” Feinstein said. “The group behind this latest attack, the Center for Medical Progress, has longstanding ties to the anti-choice movement, including Operation Rescue, which is closely associated with clinic violence.”

Feinstein talked about how anti-choice violence in the 1990s led to the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, and her concern that the “aggressive tactics” used by anti-choice groups today such as “the illegal filming of a medical procedure and the hacking of Planned Parenthood’s records” could lead to similar violence.

“I am concerned that the message being sent is that it is OK to commit crimes against Planned Parenthood, its employees, and its patients; and it is not,” Feinstein said. “That sort of message can be taken up by extremists and become very dangerous for women and doctors across the country.”

Feinstein’s speech included the typical Democratic defenses of Planned Parenthood: how it’s the primary health-care provider for millions of women, especially low-income women, and how one in five American women have gone there for health care. How Planned Parenthood’s care has been crucial for her constituents who have told her their stories. How efforts to defund Planned Parenthood distract from more important issues like national security.

But Feinstein also turned a typical Democratic talking point—that abortion only makes up 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services—on its head. Instead of waving aside that 3 percent and pointing out that federal money doesn’t pay for it, Feinstein vigorously defended it as crucial health care for women who have nowhere else to go for abortion care in their region.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) conceded that the “highly edited” videos are “disturbing” and that a review of them by the Department of Justice is “appropriate,” but also highlighted CMP’s “single purpose” to limit access to abortion services and its ties to anti-choice groups.

“[The group’s] three officers are prominent in the anti-abortion movement,” Shaheen said. “They have ties to many other politically motivated groups who are working to take away a woman’s right to choose. They have been tied to organizations that harass medical providers, doctors, and patients, try to limit access to women’s health care clinics, and they actively work to limit the reproductive health care decisions a woman can make.”

Other Democrats also called out CMP’s tactics on the Senate floor Wednesday.

“We know this extremist group went undercover and secretly taped people,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said. “That is what they did. If you approve of those tactics that is fine, but what I approve of is women getting health care. I think that when you scratch the surface, what you will find is that a lot of my colleagues don’t think women should be able to plan their families. We are still debating birth control. You have got to be kidding.”

Murray called out Republicans’ use of “undercover attack videos, produced by a radical, right-wing organization dedicated to taking away a woman’s right to choose,” and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) encouraged Planned Parenthood to keep speaking on the “merits” of their program that is “under siege from a sensationalistic and disingenuous kind of publicity.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday the videos were obtained “fraudulently” and that “there’s not a lot of evidence right now” that Planned Parenthood hasn’t lived up to the “highest ethical standards” that it describes in its policies and procedures.

And on Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) wrote a letter to Rep. Chris Murphy (R-PA), her colleague on the House Energy and Commerce committee, urging him to include CMP in the committee’s upcoming investigation into Planned Parenthood.

“I am disappointed that you have decided to open an investigation based on a clearly manipulated, deceptively edited video by an organization using ethically and legally questionable tactics,” DeGette wrote, citing a complaint against CMP filed by the American Democracy Legal Fund as well as a letter from four of her Democratic House colleagues calling for an investigation into CMP.

Last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calledfor an investigation of CMP, which she said was “trying to ensnare Planned Parenthood in a controversy that doesn’t exist.”

It seems likely that some Democrats are listening to the growing critiques of CMP from mainstream media outlets and independentinvestigations, and that they may be responding to pressure from progressives and pro-choice advocates to defend Planned Parenthood just as forcefully as conservatives attack it.

Colorado State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R-Colorado Springs), in Monday’s edition of his online video series called “Pray in Jesus’ Name,” urged his viewers to pull their children out of the Boy Scouts because “homosexual men mentoring and camping” with boys “will lead to child abuse.”

“The children are in danger,” said Klingenschmitt, a first-term Republican. “It’s not about the sexual pleasure of the adults. It should be about protecting innocent children.”

Klingenschmitt implied that gay scout leaders should be drowned because they would abuse children. Quoting the Bible, he said, “Whoever caused one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depths of the sea.”

“If your boy is in one of those organizations, you need to get him out of there, because what they are going to do is promote homosexual men to mentoring and camping with your boys in the woods, and it will lead to child abuse,” Klingenschmitt said.

Progressives and conservatives alike condemned the comment, with the Colorado State Republican Party issuing a statement Wednesday. “We strongly condemn Gordon Klingenschmitt’s highly offensive comments. As we’ve said in the past, Gordon does not speak on behalf of the Party, nor do his words reflect our Party’s values.”

“These comments are reprehensible—and he should be ashamed of himself for making them,” Dave Montez, director of One Colorado, an LGBT advocacy group, said in a statement. “Gay adults are involved in scouting for the same reasons everyone else is; to serve youth, and to help them grow into good, strong citizens.”

During a podcast prayer on March 25, Klingenschmitt called a brutal attack on a pregnant woman a “curse of God upon America for our sin of not protecting innocent children in the womb.”

Klingenschmitt was a Navy Chaplain, and he goes by the name of “Dr. Chaps.”

He plans to give up his house seat and run for state senate next year in a Colorado Springs district currently represented by Senate President Bill Cadman, who is term-limited. Klingenschmitt came to this decision after fasting for 72 hours and seeking guidance from god, he told a folks gathered at a restaurant in April.

Democrats control Colorado’s state house, and the GOP holds a one-seat majority in the senate.

The senate seat eyed by Klingenschmitt is known to be conservative and a safe seat for Republicans. But state observers say he’ll face stiff competition by fellow Republicans, as well as behind-the-scenes opposition from Republican leaders across Colorado, who see the lawmaker as sullying the image of the Republican Party in a critical swing state.

The National Abortion Federation filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prohibit the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-choice organization behind a campaign to defame Planned Parenthood, from making public any video or audio recordings and materials of NAF educational meetings.

See more of our coverage on the misleading Center for Medical Progress video here.

The National Abortion Federation filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to prohibit the Center for Medical Progress, an anti-choice organization behind a campaign to defame Planned Parenthood, from making public any video or audio recordings and materials of NAF educational meetings.

CMP has published a series of videos over the past month, and the organization claims that the undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood officials engaged in the illegal selling of fetal tissue.

Filed in the U.S. District Court, the lawsuit requests that CMP be preliminarily and permanently enjoined from publishing any recordings or confidential information from NAF annual meetings. NAF claims that any recordings or materials obtained by the CMP at official NAF meetings were done so illegally.

The lawsuit requests that CMP be prohibited from publishing or otherwise disclosing the names or addresses of any NAF members that CMP may have obtained at NAF annual meetings, and also requests that CMP be prohibited from attending and attempting to gain access to any future NAF meetings.

Vicki Saporta, president and CEO of NAF, said in a statement that the “safety and security” of the organization’s members are their top priorities.

“That security has been compromised by the illegal activities of a group with ties to those who believe it is justifiable to murder abortion providers,” Saporta said. “CMP went to great lengths to infiltrate our meetings as part of a campaign to intimidate and attack abortion providers.”

The lawsuit names CMP as a defendant as well as BioMax Procurement Services, the fake company created in order to deceive people working for Planned Parenthood and other organizations. CMP’s leader, David Daleiden, is also named in the lawsuit, as well as founding member Troy Newman, who is the president of the radical anti-choice organization Operation Rescue.

When questioned about his involvement with CMP, Newman told RH Reality Check that he was proud of the work Daleiden has done at CMP.

“Over the past three years I have offered advice and counsel to someone who has become a very good friend,” Newman said via email. “But this is just the beginning, we have moles and spies deep inside the abortion cartel. And at a time of our choosing, we will release more damning evidence of the abortion cartel’s illegal, ghastly, and repugnant butchery.”

When asked to respond to the questions that have been raised about whether or not CMP had broken any laws in making the videos, Newman told RH Reality Check that it was not CMP that was breaking the law.

“We always abide by all local and federal laws, it’s Planned Parenthood that is flagrantly breaking the law,” Newman said via email.

The NAF lawsuit comes a day after a California court issued a temporary restraining order preventing CMP from releasing a video of three StemExpress officials, which was reportedly taped in a California restaurant in May. A former employee of StemExpress, which provides human tissue, blood, and other specimens to researchers, was prominently featured in a video released Tuesday by CMP.

The videos published by CMP have sparked outrage directed at Planned Parenthood from Republicans and anti-choice activists.

Republican lawmakers in several states have called for investigations into Planned Parenthood, and lawmakers across the country have compared the organization to everything from drug dealers to Nazis. State lawmakers in Texas held a hearing Wednesday to investigate the issue, even though, like those in Indiana, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas don’t collect fetal tissue for donation in medical research.

No state or federal investigation to date has found the organization in violation of any law regarding the handling of fetal tissue, as Congress is set to vote on Monday on a proposal by Republicans to block Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding.

Derek Foran, litigation partner with Morrison & Foerster, who is representing NAF in the lawsuit pro bono, said in a statement the he is confident the facts will show that CMP has engaged in an “extraordinary fraud” that was meant to harass abortion providers and endanger women’s access to abortion care.

“We are proud to stand with NAF and its members in the fight against anti-abortion extremists, who have smeared abortion providers and placed them in personal jeopardy, simply for ensuring the constitutional right of women in this country to make their own reproductive choices,” Foran said.

Planned Parenthood is certainly the target, but its destruction is not the goal, any more than destroying ACORN was the true goal back in 2008. Destruction would be a happy side effect, but the true goal is to destroy the pathway for women to have access to legal and safe abortions.

See more of our coverage on the misleading Center for Medical Progress videos here.

To understand exactly how the most recent Planned Parenthood sting was planned and coordinated, you must go back to 2013. In July of 2013, Washington, D.C. reporter David Corn revealed the existence of a high-powered group of people who viewed themselves as a conservative army fighting a war on multiple fronts. From the wife of a Supreme Court justice to the chief of staff for Sen. Ted Cruz, members of this group were determined to stop all progress before it could even begin.

They Called Themselves “Groundswell”

Just after Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, disappointed conservative thought leaders came together at the annual CPAC conference in Washington, D.C. to strategize. Demoralized but determined, they formed a plan to fight a “30-front war to fundamentally transform the nation.”

In early 2013, they formed an email group to begin the process of organizing for action and messaging coordination. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ key aide Danielle Cutrona was part of the group, as was Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Breitbart News Editor John Nolte, Family Research Council officials Jerry Boykin and Ken Blackwell, Tea Party Patriots Founder Jenny Beth Martin, Washington, D.C. attorney and public relations expert Diana Banister, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, former Congressman Allen West, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, Frank Gaffney, and Ted Cruz staffer Max Pappas rounded out the top-tier of group participants, according to David Corn’s report.

They met weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch to hone their message and action plans. One meeting was secretly recorded, getting them on the record with regard to their desire to get a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack, mostly for the purpose of obtaining unlimited subpoena power.

Their goal was not merely to function as a messaging machine, but to “sync messages and develop action from reports and information exchanged,” according to the minutes of their March 27, 2013 meeting. “Going forward there should be an action item accompanying each report,” they concluded.

The purpose of the group was to collaborate and coordinate strategy and action for their multiple “fronts.” Shadow government assignments were made, committees were formed, and strategies were developed. All of this was done with participation and input from key congressional staffers working in the House and the Senate. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), now House Majority Whip, was the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee at the time. His staff routinely dropped in to tip off the group as to upcoming votes on key issues.One of the most active participants on the email list was Danielle Cutrona, who was a key staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions.

Whenever there was a need for support or for opposition to legislation, or an investigation or opposition to a judicial nominee, these staffers would reach into the group in order to recruit members for messaging or action support.

Immigration reform, religious liberty, and judicial appointments were high on their list of priorities, and they enjoyed some successes. They got their Select Committee on Benghazi, they successfully opposed one of the president’s judicial nominees who was not sufficiently steeped in their idea of Second Amendment interpretation, and they were wildly successful with their attack on the Internal Revenue Service’s procedure for approving nonprofit organizations.

Blueprint for Activism

After David Corn broke the story of this group two years ago and audio of one of their weekly meetings became public, a blueprint for how to track coordination to advance its agenda, via messaging and action with key congressional aides, emerged.

One such example can be found in their effort to push the idea that the president was putting “politics over public safety” with regard to immigration reform.

Frank Gaffney penned a Washington Times op-ed titled “Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Tom Fitton headlined a Judicial Watch weekly update “Politics over Public Safety: More Illegal Alien Criminals Released by Obama Administration.” Peter List, editor of LaborUnionReport.com, authored a RedState.com post called “Obama’s Machiavellian Sequestration Pain Game: Putting Politics Over Public Safety.” Matthew Boyle used the phrase in an immigration-related article for Breitbart. And Dan Bongino promoted Boyle’s story on Twitter by tweeting, “Politics over public safety?” In a message to Groundswellers, Ginni Thomas awarded “brownie points” to Fitton, Gaffney, and other members for promoting the “politics over public safety” riff.

All Eyes on Planned Parenthood

Groundswell is now two years old, having cut its teeth on the fight against Common Core and the 2014 elections. Its members are just now hitting their stride and the evidence can be seen in the latest series of Planned Parenthood videos, which were carefully timed and coordinated for maximum political gain.

Here’s a look at the timeline and principal players. To determine the rollout, I used archived pages from the aggregation site Memeorandum and checked hourly snapshots to see how the story spread.

On July 14, Lila Rose’s Live Action News posted the press release and video from the so-called Center for Medical Progress. One of the first to pick up the story in less than an hour from its release was Austin Ruse, for Breitbart News. Ruse is a member of Groundswell, as is Breitbart’s managing editor, Stephen Bannon.

The Daily Caller was next, where Ginni Thomas serves as a contributor. Thomas was one of the key drivers of messaging and issues inside the Groundswell group, assigning key phrases and terms to group members to use for action and articles.

The Washington Free Beacon, a new but well-funded online news site, was next up shortly thereafter with facts and figures about federal funding for Planned Parenthood, suggesting that it was time to withdraw that funding, based upon the not-yet debunked report from the CMP.

The Federalist, the Heritage Foundation’s “news site” posted a story about Hillary Clinton’s vocal support for Margaret Sanger, using the long-debunked claim that Sanger supported the extermination of the Black race because of her allyship with the eugenics movement. (The Heritage Foundation was being considered for membership in the group in March 2013, but was not present at the May Groundswell meeting.)

The story was spreading, but slowly. This was partly due to reports of David Daleiden’s ties to the now-disgraced and unreliable sting artist James O’Keefe, as well as his ties to racist and also-disgraced blogger Chuck Johnson.

When the story didn’t catch fire quickly enough, the Daily Caller reporter who had first reported the story came back around for a second shot, observing that Democratic candidates were largely silent on the issue of “alleged Planned Parenthood felonies.”

July 14 also happened to be the day many left-side activists and writers were en route to Phoenix, Arizona, for Netroots Nation, which is the largest gathering of political activists, operatives, and writers for the left. The release date meant that the story would have the benefit of several hours before any level of significant skepticism would register from Planned Parenthood or allies online.

Also on July 14: Anti-abortion extremists convened in Alabama, home state to Sen. Jeff Sessions. Some groups represented in Alabama are connected to David Daleiden and his front group used for the Planned Parenthood sting.

By the close of business on July 14, the story had been picked up by all of the conservative news outlets online, and it was beginning to spread throughout social media. The key phrase for this onslaught was “Planned Parenthood sells baby parts.” Each and every article uses that language to describe the CMP video.

On July 15, House Speaker John Boehner announced an investigation into the allegations on the video, which had already been shown to be false. Leading the charge on that front in the Senate: Ted Cruz.

On July 16, representatives admitted they had seen the video weeks before its release.

On July 17, Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Tim Murphy sent a letter to Planned Parenthood requesting specific information about the fetal tissue program.

Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin was not shy about reaching out to Congress for specific action. In the recording of Groundswell’s May 8, 2013 meeting, he outlined the contacts he had made—including a late-night hallway meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)—to facilitate a select committee on Benghazi. Similarly, here we have a story based on edited video intended to attack Planned Parenthood with inflammatory rhetoric and repugnant images crafted to spark congressional action. That action came one day later, when John Boehner announced a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation program. The investigation and ensuing releases of more edited video are intended to keep the extreme conservative base engaged and angry while inflicting deep harm on Planned Parenthood. Just as the Benghazi hearings were intended to harm Hillary Clinton’s credibility, so too are the Planned Parenthood attacks and congressional inquiries intended to keep the anti-abortion extremists engaged in the electoral process underway.Planned Parenthood is certainly the target, but its destruction is not the goal, any more than destroying ACORN was the true goal back in 2008. Destruction would be a happy side effect, but the true goal is to destroy the pathway for women to have access to legal and safe abortions. As this cabal of conservatives has demonstrated, their goal is to spur Congress to further ban abortions while also promoting Republican extreme conservatives in the 2016 field as the True Heroes for primary voters.

It should bother us all that the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice is involved in this level of coordination with everyone from media outlets to congressional staffers. It should bother us more that they are successful in their attempts to derail serious debate about serious issues by creating and promoting a video that does not prove what they claim to prove, in a calculating and manipulative way for the sole purpose of gaining an electoral advantage.

See more of our coverage on the misleading Center for Medical Progress videos here.

An Indiana State Department of Health investigation into Planned Parenthood-affiliated reproductive health-care clinics in the state found them in compliance with the state’s fetal tissue regulations.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky operates three clinics that provide surgical abortion care in Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Merrillville. All of the clinics were found to be in compliance with state regulations and were not cited for any deficiencies, according to documents released by Planned Parenthood.

“The investigation has concluded there was no evidence of this type of activity at these sites,” the Indiana State Department of Health said in a statement, reported the Indianapolis Star. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky does not participate in fetal tissued donation programs.

The investigations into all three clinics were completed on July 21, and the complaint was closed as of that date.

Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, said in a statement that she was pleased that the issue was resolved.

“As we’ve said all along, PPINK doesn’t participate in a tissue donation program. We hold compliance with all laws and regulations as an imperative,” Cockrum said. “We’re not surprised the surveyors found the claims unsubstantiated. Perhaps now Indiana’s executive leadership will focus on measures such as teen pregnancy prevention and reducing the cycle of poverty to truly advance the dream of thriving Hoosier families.”

Gov. Mike Pence (R) directed the Department of Health to investigate Planned Parenthood on July 16, after an undercover, heavily edited video was published by an anti-choice front group that claimed the footage proved Planned Parenthood was illegally selling tissue from aborted fetus.

“Under federal and state law, the buying or selling of human body parts is a felony and, as Governor, I have an obligation to make sure this is not happening in Indiana,” Pence said in a statement. “Whatever one’s view on the issue of abortion, Hoosiers can be assured that we will make certain that this appalling practice is not taking place in Indiana.”

Indiana has been hostile towards reproductive rights under Pence and the Republican-controlled state legislature. Several anti-choice bills have been introduced and passed into law in recent years, and this year Pence signed a bill into law creating more burdensome regulations for abortion clinics.

Since ordering the investigation, Pence gave public statements and interviews hyping the investigation, in addition to publishingmultipletweets on the matter. Pence published a tweet promoting the investigation Wednesday, a day after Planned Parenthood had received documentation that the Department of Health found no violations of the law.

The virulently anti-choice governor gave a statement Friday praising the speed of the investigation.

“I thought it was altogether appropriate for the Indiana State Department of Health to publish the results of that inquiry and move forward,” Pence said, reported the Indianapolis Star. “I’m pleased with the swift and professional manner that the Indiana State Department of Health went about this investigation and Hoosiers can be assured that we’ll continue to see to it that our laws in this area are strictly enforced.”

Republican lawmakers in several states have called for investigations into Planned Parenthood, and lawmakers across the country have compared the organization to everything from drug dealers to Nazis. State lawmakers in Texas held a hearing Wednesday to investigate the issue, even though, like those in Indiana, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas don’t collect fetal tissue for donation in medical research.

As Congress is set to vote on Monday on a proposal by Republican lawmakers to block Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding, no state or federal investigation to date has found the organization has violated any law regarding the handling of fetal tissue.

In early July, the Associated Press broke the news that Bill Cosby admitted, in a 2005 deposition, to procuring prescription Quaaludes “with the intent of giving them to young women he wanted to have sex with.” The AP, which had gone to court to have portions of the previously sealed deposition made public, further reported that Cosby acknowledged “giving the sedative to at least one woman and ‘other people.’” The New York Times has since obtained and published excerpts of the full transcript of the deposition, reporting that Cosby’s own words paint him as “an unapologetic, cavalier playboy, someone who used a combination of fame, apparent concern, and powerful sedatives in a calculated pursuit of young women—a profile at odds with the the popular image he so long enjoyed, that of father figure and public moralist.”

Fallout from these latest revelations has been swift and dramatic. And they share a disturbing subtext: the assumption that women, that survivors, cannot be believed. That the words of one man had a credibility the words of more than 40 women did not. That, in fact, in the absence of a man’s words, indefinite public suspicion of women as liars and gold diggers is acceptable and even rational.

When it comes to accusations of assault, one man will always matter more than any number of women. No number of women, no volume of women’s testimony, will suffice as “proof.”

With the headlines about the 2005 deposition have come reactions from the business world, public figures, and others that now seem long overdue months after controversy exploded over resurfacing allegations of serial rape and sexual assault by Cosby. Within a day of the AP’s report, Walt Disney World announced plans to remove a statue of Cosby from its Hollywood Studios theme park. On the same day, the two remaining cable channels still airing reruns of the Cosby Showpulled it from their lineups, joining TV Land, which had dropped the show last year. CAA, Cosby’s most recent talent agency, announced in the wake of the AP bombshell that it had also parted ways with the comedian in 2014. Calls emerged to rescind the Presidential Medal of Freedom Cosby received from George W. Bush in 2002, with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) expressing support for such efforts.

The View’s Whoopi Goldberg, who has been one of the loudest defenders of her friend and fellow comedian, initially dismissed coverage of Cosby’s testimony with a warning against “snap judgments” and a reminder that “In America, still—I know it’s a shock—but you are innocent until proven guilty. [Cosby] has not been proven a rapist.” But only days later, Goldberg walked back this defense, allowing, “If this is to be tried in the court of public opinion … all the information that is out there kind of points to guilt.” Goldberg’s co-host and former Cosby Show star Raven-Symoné, however, remains unconvinced; she said on The View that she needs “proof” to make a judgment, and in a later People interview added, “we will see what happens.” Singer Jill Scott, who last year dismissed the allegations against her one-time mentor as “insane,” took back her words as soon as the AP report came out. “I stood by a man I respected and loved,” she said on Twitter, but “I was wrong. It HURTS!!!”

Shortly after the New York Times reported on Cosby’s full deposition, Spelman College announced the permanent termination of the professorship endowed by Bill and Camille Cosby in 1988, and the return of what remains of the $20 million donation that created it. This decision—following the suspension of the professorship when allegations first resurfaced in November—marked the end of an over-20-year relationship between the school and the Cosby family. Producer Nonie Robinson, who had described her film Painted Down as the “last project standing behind [Cosby],” announced that Cosby had been cut from the documentary: “with Whoopi [Goldberg] and CAA pulling the plug, we must also disassociate and cut all ties with Cosby. It’s the right thing to do in light of the recent court deposition being made public.”

These responses reflect an apparent sentiment that Cosby’s 2005 statement gives serious credibility to accusations against him—by implication, a credibility lacking in the testimony of the more than 40 women (not including Jane Does) who have come forward to say Cosby assaulted them. The New York Times, for example, called the deposition “vindication” for these women, while CNN reported that “Bill Cosby’s own words … provide the strongest evidence so far for … [the] women alleging the 77-year-old comedian drugged and raped them.”

Coverage of the allegations against Cosby has generally left much to be desired. But I find myself particularly struck by recurring questions of proof and presumed innocence in commentary on this case. There is not as much daylight as it might initially appear between the seeming consensus that Cosby’s deposition provides a previously missing smoking gun and the continued insistence of a few, like Raven-Symoné, that Cosby’s guilt hasn’t been “proven.” Both imply that the testimonies of the women in question are not, on their own, evidence enough in the court of public opinion.

As many have pointed out in such cases, “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a legal standard intended to protect the rights of those accused of or prosecuted for breaking the law. Yet there is always a faction who asserts “innocent until proven guilty” as a reason why alleged perpetrators should not face public censure, or even serious weighing of the accusations against them in public forums. As iconic as Bill Cosby is and was, and as uniquely heinous as the crimes he is accused of are, his case is mundane and typical in this respect. In general, when it comes to sexual violence and other forms of abuse, we are all too ready to give alleged perpetrators an extreme benefit of the doubt, while imposing an impossible standard of “proof” on those who come forward as survivors—all in the name of being impartial and fair.

Obscured by these claims of objectivity are the troubling implications for survivors of applying this standard to public opinion. Doing so requires us to accept that our central ethical and moral responsibility as a culture is to assume good faith and character on the part of alleged perpetrators until the absence of those qualities is absolutely made clear. It requires us to accept, by corollary, that our central responsibility is not to support and serve those identifying themselves as survivors, but instead to assume they are fabricators and frauds until presented with ironclad “proof” that, in the vast majority of cases, cannot and will not ever materialize. On some level we all know this—that such intimate violations by nature make absolute proof a virtually impossible standard to meet.

These are the lengths to which we are willing to go to give men the benefit of doubt. The minute possibility of innocence absolves us of responsibility to be in solidarity with survivors, much less to provide material support and services to those potentially living with the aftermath of rape.

This belies the claims to objectivity that often come with scolding reminders to stick to “innocent until proven guilty.” This standard, we’re told, is a dispassionate weighing of facts. Such folks see themselves, or at least claim to, as staying above the fray, resisting being swayed by mass media and public bandwagons, declining to choose a side until they have “more information” or “concrete evidence.”

This is a self-deception. Whatever stance one takes on Bill Cosby or any other alleged abuser, it always involves making a choice. It is more honest to flatly state disbelief in survivors—as singer Jill Scott initially did, before the revelations about Cosby’s deposition led her to backtrack—than to claim rational, nonpartisan distance. To imply that all parties are equally likely to be telling the truth is the opposite of neutrality.

Here is the reality: Refusing to believe survivors in the name of “innocent until proven guilty” could not be further from a commitment to fairness and objectivity. Belief is, in a sense, identification, a kind of recognition. To doggedly cling to the possibility of innocence is to primarily identify with the alleged perpetrator and to project oneself into their place, assuming they are falsely accused and imagining the damaging consequences of being wrongfully viewed as a rapist.

And as a culture, we are far more willing to do the emotional work of identification—to engage our imaginations and empathy—on behalf of those accused of sexual violence than those who have survived it. It is far easier for us to worry over the possibility, no matter how remote, of “destroying” the life of an innocent person, than to do the more uncomfortable work of putting ourselves in the much more likely scenario: living with the devastation caused by sexual violence, and the suspicion and contempt with which survivors are viewed.

Why do we consistently choose to identify with accused perpetrators over victims? Perhaps part of the reason is understandable terror at the thought that we too could suffer—for some, suffer again—such violation. Giving the accused the benefit of the doubt, though it means withholding that same benefit from survivors, perhaps affords us the comforting illusion of safety.

But it is not only that identifying with survivors is uncomfortable and frightening. It is also that institutionalized power and systemic oppression work by insisting on the fundamental innocence and trustworthiness of power—whether that’s whiteness, patriarchy, wealth, or something else. They work by casting the marginalized in the role of perpetual suspects who always have to prove their experiences and oppression are real. We are systematically taught that only power deserves the automatic benefit of the doubt.

We are always faced with a choice: Who will receive the bulk of our sympathies? Who is afforded the luxury of being seen as a fleshed-out individual, of being allowed to be flawed and yet still human, still relatable? Who will we do the emotional labor of identifying with?

Our cultural scripts are clear: We are to do the work of presuming innocence for accused perpetrators, not victims. Perhaps more terrifying, our investment in disbelieving victims for the sake of maintaining the possibility of that innocence is so complete that we don’t even process it for the emotional labor it is.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” in rape culture, feels like fairness. It feels like objective weighing of evidence. It feels like rationality. It feels obvious. That it requires us to assume that survivors are lying—if not outright con artists—escapes our notice. Until we wake up to the reality that we are taught to consistently see ourselves in and side with perpetrators over victims, with men over women, the word of one man will continue to be worth more than the voices of any number of women.

This Week in Sex is a weekly summary of news and research related to sexual behavior, sexuality education, contraception, STIs, and more.

Survey Says: Millennials Are Using Condoms, Lubes, and Toys, and They’re Having Orgasms

A new survey by condom manufacturer Ansell targeted over 5,000 men and women ages 18 to 34 and asked them 69 questions (yep, not 70, and probably not a coincidence) about sexuality and relationships.

It found that 43 percent of millennials are using lubricants and over a quarter are using vibrators. This could explain why so many of the women are climaxing—89 percent of women respondents said they typically have an orgasm during sex.

And as for that sex, the most common position is doggy style, followed by missionary and cowgirl. Men reportedly said they prefer doggy style, while the women in the survey said they liked missionary better. The most common day for sex: a birthday.

The survey also found that the more academic degrees millennials have, the more likely they are to use condoms, though there is no way of knowing whether they are actually getting a formal sex education in schools. What the findings do show is that 65 percent of individuals with a professional degree reported using condoms, compared to 44 percent of respondents with a high school diploma. And, 58 percent of millennials currently enrolled at a university reported using condoms.

When they’re not actually having sex, respondents appear to be using their phones to talk about sex. Over half (57 percent) of millennials reported sexting, with 7 percent saying they sext daily and 11 percent saying they do it several times per week. And some of those sexts include art: 49 percent of millennials have sent naked pictures on their mobile phones, and 25 percent sent such pictures via Snapchat.

But don’t expect them to stop using their mobile phones—at least not the 37 percent of respondents who said they would rather give up sex than the Internet for a year.

Women Have Riskier Sex When on Vacation

Vacation sex is not a new concept, but researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of Florida wanted to know if individuals engaged in riskier behavior while on holiday than they do at home.

They surveyed more than 850 women ages 18 to 50 online and asked about their own behavior as well as their perceptions about which tourist activities and destinations were most conducive to sexual risk-taking.

The results suggest that tourist experiences in tropical destinations or European countries are seen as the ultimate settings for sex with a steady or at least known sexual partner, and a group tour is best for casual sex with an acquaintance.

What is it about vacation that leads to sex? Well, there are many factors—lack of schedule and responsibility, a disconnect from everyday life, and anonymity were all brought up by respondents. One major facilitator of vacation sex: heavy drinking. Some women, however, just saw risk itself as part of the vacation experience.

Women were also asked to rank 23 sexual practices—such as going to a sex club, having unprotected sex with a stranger, or having sex in a restroom—in order of perceived risk. Not surprisingly, those women who reported having engaged in risky sex while a tourist perceived these activities as less risky than their peers did.

Though sex on the beach may not seem like a serious subject for academic study, the researchers point out that there are public health ramifications. As one of the researchers said in a press release: “The fact that women have tendencies to underestimate the risks involved in non-penetrative sexual activities, overestimate the protection of condoms, and attribute sexual risk-taking to alcohol consumption are factors that sexual health information campaigns might want to address.”

Measure Requiring Porn Actors to Wear Condoms May Be on the 2016 Ballot in California

Advocates announced last week that they have gathered enough signatures to put a measure requiring condoms in all adult films shot in California on the 2016 ballot.

As RH Reality Checkhas been reporting, the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has been working on various measures over the last few years to mandate condoms in porn films with mixed success. Attempts to get the LA City Council to agree to the mandate failed a number of times, but in 2012 voters in that city approved “Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act,” known as Measure B, despite producers’ threats that they would simply film elsewhere. Enforcement of the rule has been difficult, and last year AHF took its fight to the state legislature, where efforts to pass a new policy failed.

Now, AHF is turning once again to the voters with a statewide ballot initiative that would require all production companies to certify, under the penalty of perjury, that condoms were used in all acts of vaginal and anal sex. Violators would face fines of up to $70,000. Production companies would also have to post a sign on set notifying actors that condoms are required.

The adult film industry is opposed to any such requirements, arguing that it is capable of keeping its performers safe. Many others in the state oppose the measure as well because of the financial implications. Since Measure B passed in Los Angeles, the number of permits given to adult films has dropped by 90 percent. The state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, a non-partisan fiscal advisor, says that if passed, the ballot initiative will not only cost the state millions of dollars to enforce each year, the state will simultaneously lose tens of millions of dollars each year in tax revenue.

Still, AHF President Michael Weinstein believes that voters will go for the measure. He told the Los Angeles Times, “unlike most politicians, voters were not squeamish about this issue, seeing it as a means to protect the health and safety of performers working in the industry.”

The secretary of state confirmed last week that the initiative had received enough signatures—365,880—to be placed on the ballot. The signatures still have to be validated by state officials.

See more of our coverage on the misleading Center for Medical Progress videos here.

The Senate is poised to vote Monday on a Republican proposal to defund Planned Parenthood and divert the funds to other health-care entities.

The bill, S. 1881, was drafted by a “working group” led by Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rand Paul (R-KY), and James Lankford (R-OK), and has at least 32 Republican co-sponsors.

Congressional Republicans have introduced numerous bills using various tactics to try to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding, including a failed effort to attach an amendment to a must-pass highway bill, and other bills in both houses that would put a moratorium on funding for a year while investigations proceed.

It’s an old goal that has new anti-choice energy behind it after the release of deceptively edited videos showing Planned Parenthood employees discussing a legal fetal tissue donation program.

Ernst’s bill is a standalone piece of legislation that almost certainly doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate, especially with two Republicans (Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois and Susan Collins of Maine) opposing the measure.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has criticized the bill as a “show vote” because of its low chances of passing and said that Republicans should do everything they can, including shutting down the government in the fall, to defund Planned Parenthood. Eighteen House Republicans agreed with Cruz in a Wednesday letter sent to leadership.

The bill to be voted on Monday would prohibit any federal funds from going to Planned Parenthood. It says, “All funds no longer available to Planned Parenthood will continue to be made available to other eligible entities to provide women’s health care services.”

It’s a move that fits in with recent talking points from Republicans and anti-choice activists, who have been busy trying to convince the public that Planned Parenthood’s health services are redundant because other publicly funded health-care providers also offer them.

These tactics appear intended to deflect staunch criticism from Democrats that defunding Planned Parenthood would leave 2.7 million women floundering to access the health services that they depend on the organization for, such as contraception, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection tests, immunizations, and other preventive health care.

“So when you say, ‘Let’s defund Planned Parenthood’—because you never liked that they exist—what you are saying is that women, primarily in low-income communities, and many women of color, won’t have access to a wide range of essential health services, because of an ideological desire to control what choices are made between a woman and her doctor,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on the floor Thursday.

“This exploitative movement, advanced by special interests, would effectively tell half-a-million American women: ‘Sorry, you can’t have a breast exam this year,’” Gillibrand said. “They’re telling 400,000 American women, ‘Sorry, you won’t be able to have a lifesaving screening for cervical cancer.’”

Since federal funds don’t cover abortion, other women’s health services—which make up 97 percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides—are in practice the ones targeted by federal defunding efforts.

But if Republicans can claim they will make sure women won’t lose those services, that could undermine the arguments of Democrats who don’t forcefully defend Planned Parenthood as an abortion provider specifically, and who don’t highlight the consequences of women losing access to abortion if Planned Parenthood were to close its doors nationwide.

Even keeping the focus on non-abortion-related services, though, critics say that this funding reroute simply won’t work the way it’s intended to.

“The problem is, in my state and many others, Planned Parenthood is the primary provider of women’s health services in certain parts of my state,” Collins, one of two Republicans opposed to the bill, told The Hill. “[I] don’t know how you would ensure that all of the patients of Planned Parenthood could be absorbed by alternative care providers.”

One issue is that America already faces a reproductive health provider shortage, and that about half of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are in rural, underserved areas where their patients may have nowhere else to go for care.

Another problem is that women often can’t get the full range of services they need from primary care providers that don’t focus on reproductive health. Primary care providers are less likely to have at least ten methods of contraceptives on-site and less likely to offer long-acting methods like IUDs, but they are very likely to refer patients to other providers that specialize in family planning.

The bill’s language about redistributing funds is vague and seems to offer no clear guarantee that other health-care providers would actually get the funds, nor does it specify which providers would get them and how.

“Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Joni Ernst should probably listen to the medical community before they decide to legislate health care for millions of people,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “Family planning providers are uniquely qualified to provide reproductive health care, and providers have asserted that the ‘absorption’ plan to simply hand off millions of women’s health care simply isn’t feasible.”

Laguens added that when Planned Parenthood funding has been cut at the state level, it led to an unprecedented HIV outbreak in Indiana and caused 54 percent fewer patients in Texas to receive care.

Ideological warfare about abortion via advertising has a long track record, though it’s a past largely forgotten in history’s fog and the present’s relentless attacks on abortion rights. Today’s reproductive rights and justice advocates can’t afford to forget that past.

This piece is published in collaboration with Echoing Ida, a Forward Together project.

Across the United States, billboards are visible evidence of the contentious abortion debate. Enlarged images of fetuses, cherubic babies, distressed women, and Bible verses tower over highways and byways like anti-abortion sentinels overseeing America’s culture wars.

Notice I didn’t mention images that show happy, pro-choice women, for it’s a lopsided roadside debate.

Rarely do we see billboards promoting abortion rights or the broader ideals of reproductive justice; there are few examples like New Voices Cleveland’s recent sponsorship of these billboards that affirmed, in the wake of the police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in the city, that reproductive justice includes the right to parent and protect children. Abortion opponents have effectively cornered the market on this advertising medium and, to paraphrase a hackneyed phrase from “American Idol” judges, have made the billboard their own.

But the good news: The billboard is a just a tool (like video is a tool)—and tools can be harnessed for any movement. In fact, past abortion-rights advocates used billboards to good effect—even before Roe v. Wade. Ideological warfare about abortion via advertising has a long track record, though it’s a past largely forgotten in history’s fog and the present’s relentless attacks on abortion rights. Today’s reproductive rights and justice advocates can’t afford to forget that past. They may need to “go back to the future” to resurrect this tool in an era where women face increasing restrictions on abortion, and providers face proposed laws that would curtail their ability to offer reproductive health care to women most in need.

So what is it that advocates need to remember or learn? For starters, many early billboards functioned as straightforward advertising for abortion—even when it wasn’t widely legal. This roadside sign popped up in McGrann, Pennsylvania, in 1971 and pointed people to neighboring New York state, which had legalized abortion in 1970.

Similar billboards featuring phone numbers began sprouting like giant flowers on the American landscape. As this picture demonstrates, referral services—some nonprofit and some that operated as for-profit entities—also took to streetsides before Roe to tell women that they could find health carein the form of abortion and sterilization.

Distributing information about abortion through billboards or other advertisements was not without risk; those who did so could face arrest. In 1972, Charlottesville, Virginia, newspaper editor Jeffrey Bigelow was charged with running advertisements for a New-York based abortion referral service and convicted under a state law banning any public promotion of abortion services. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but took a back seat to the bigger challenges to abortion bans: the cases that would become Roe and Georgia’s Doe v. Bolton. Bigelow v. Virginia was eventually decided in 1975; Bigelow’s conviction was overturned because there could be no limits on the advertising of a service that had become legal.

At the same time, the young anti-abortion movement was also rolling out its own billboards, said historian Jennifer Donnally, a Hollins University visiting professor who researches abortion politics and the new right. From the early days when anti-abortion advocates were organizing against state-level abortion law reform, they have made billboards a key part of their messaging.

“Anti-abortion billboards began to appear on highways in New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington [state] prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as part of statewide campaigns against abortion repeal efforts,” Donnally told RH Reality Check.

Many of those billboards were tied to specific ballot measures or potential law changes. In 1970, when Washington state planned a referendum where voters could decide to allow abortion in some circumstances, opponents (and their billboards) came out in full force. “Kill Referendum 20, not me,” implored a billboard picturing a fake fetus cradled in an adult hand. Accused of using tasteless scare tactics, Voice of the Unborn (the group behind the billboards) replied through a representative, reported the New York Times in October of that year: “They show an exact medical school replica of a 4-month-old baby. If the billboards seem to be shocking, perhaps it’s the idea of abortion that’s shocking.” (The referendum passed with 56 percent of the vote, and allowed women and girls to have abortions if they requested them, with the consent of their husbands or guardians, and if the procedure was performed by a licensed physician.)

Donnally noted that anti-abortion billboards have taken different forms and served many purposes over time. They moved from makeshift messages in cornfields to slick public-relations creations, and they mobilized supporters in different ways according to the movement’s age and successes.

“The publicity billboards educatedthe public and recruited potential activists. Behind the scenes, efforts to place billboards trained anti-abortion activists in fundraising and media relations while also [making] activists feel effective when the movement was in its early stages, following setbacks or celebrating victories. Sometimes, billboard campaigns were sophisticated. Other times, a farmer in a rural area who had a hard time connecting to anti-abortion chapters concentrated in cities and towns took action into his or her own hands,” added Donnally. “They made a plywood anti-abortion sign and posted it on their land next to a heavily traveled highway.”

After the Bigelow ruling, anti-abortion advertising gained steam in the mid-1970s. A February 1976 Village Voice article called John C. Willke, then a practicing obstetrician and a future president of the National Right to Life Committee, the “visual aids guru of the pro-life movement.” Willke’s first visual aids were often slideshows that Willke and his wife presented in talks to high schoolers.

But, according to the article, Willke’s “newest project [was] the creation of the three billboard posters. The least offensive reads ‘Abortion: A woman’s right to choose.’” “Choose” was crossed out and replaced with “kill.” A second billboard depicted tiny feet and this text: “This baby won’t keep his mother awake at night … at least not yet.” Willke planned to erect a fetus billboard atop a building across from a Minnesota hospital that provided abortions, the article added.

Willke’s focus on the fetus and abortion’s supposedly negative and life-changing effects on the woman—now cornerstones of anti-abortion rhetoric—was an experimental and emergent strategy then. Emphasizing abortion as an emotional harm and women as its simultaneous victims and perpetrators, right-to-life groups were often explicit when telling their members how to best deploy billboards. An undated newsletter from the Jackson, Mississippi-based Christian Action Group provided hand-drawn illustrations of possible billboards, one showing “baby’s first visit to the doctor,” a menacing-looking physician holding a black sack and a frazzled woman hovering in the background. Also included was a sample billboard that showed a hand wielding a scalpel, labeled “a pro-choice pacifier.”

The illustrations came with this advice on using billboards to the best advantage: “One form of ‘advocacy advertising,’ such as political advertising, is to convince people of the justification of your point of view. Another is to make people ashamed to be with your [opponents]. These billboards are the latter.” Cultivating and multiplying shame was a tactic. As abortion opponents’ philosophy went, Americans—even the most well-intentioned or those ignorant of the “real” story about abortion—needed to be confronted visually with their silent complicity.

When Roe came under significant legal challenge in the 1980s, billboards became even more overtly political. In 1988, the year before the U.S. Supreme Court decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services that allowed states to restrict abortion, a Planned Parenthood billboard showed six male (and mostly anti-abortion) Supreme Court justices holding their own sign saying “Freedom of Choice,” but with Chief Justice William Rehnquist slamming his gavel on the word “of” and Justices Harry Blackmun and Clarence Thomas holding a replacement sign with the word “from.” Also in 1988, anti-abortion activists experimented with a new form of advertising by placing anti-abortion placards in Atlanta taxis during the Democratic National Convention there.

A year later, in 1989, Prolife Across America was up and running. It works as an anti-abortion billboard mill, cranking out design after design (as well as radio spots and other advertising).

Therein lies the difference: Billboards have been institutionalized in anti-abortion media strategy and organizations, but they seemed to fade from the strategic agendas of reproductive rights organizations. In 2014, the Prolife Across America/Prolife Minnesota tax return reported that its designs were emblazoned on more than 6,000 billboards, reaching Americans stuck in traffic or driving to work every day with its larger-than-life messages. The group often says those messages are hotlines for pregnant women, educational, and roadside ministry all wrapped into one. Other organizations provide templates or the actual printed vinyl panels that bear the messages and drape over the standard billboard frames for prices as cheap as $200 (not including the cost of billboard rental, which varies widely according to geography, company, and the estimated number of motorists and views at given locations).

As the billboard has become a consistent anti-abortion platform, the messages billboards have carried read like a conversation between abortion opponents and other social movements. Billboard makers have blatantly adaptedthe slogans of feminism and civil rights and even the images of Black political leaders such as Frederick Douglass or Barack Obama—and with varying degrees of deftness or tone-deafness.

By the 1990s, billboards in the Midwest had reworked a common feminist bumper sticker to read “Pro-life: The radical idea that fetuses are people.” Later, billboards took an explicitly racial turn. In 2011, billboards proclaiming “Black & Beautiful” alongside pictures of Black infants appeared in Oakland, California. Sponsored by the anti-abortion group Issues4Life, the billboards appropriated the language of the Black Panther movement, which had its most well-known and vocal chapter in the Bay Area city.

Images and messages on billboards that explicitly targeted Black communities—and paved the way for others aimed at Latinos and Asians—were not entirely new. As scholar Gillian Frank has pointed out, a 1972 Michigan referendum about changing that state’s abortion law pushed anti-abortion groups to begin developing brochures that pictured Black babies and compared abortion to slavery, now old-hat anti-abortion fare.

More than 20 years later, diverse groups protested the encroachment of racist billboards in their home communities. In Oakland in 2011, Strong Families and a coalition of multiracial groups joined forces to persuade CBS Outdoor to take down controversial signage—a campaign similar to one used a year before by the Atlanta-based SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective when billboards also owned by CBS and claiming that “black children are an endangered species” appeared in the Georgia capital. Earlier this year, the reproductive justice group SisterReach successfully pushed for the removal of anti-abortion billboards in Tennessee.

Yet the hand that giveth does taketh away. Contemporary groups fighting for abortion access find that many billboard and other advertising companies reserve the right to deny or take down controversial content. And those contractual stipulations mean that some companies will reject outright advertising that specifically references abortion or simply points women to services—for fear that the other side will cause a ruckus and demand its removal. Fears of the “A-word” have made it into the online world, with Google determining that abortion ads were “non-family-safe” content and categorizing them with adult advertising and entertainment.

Whatever the advertising format, it’s clear that this type of commercial and political speech isn’t going away. And few people know that better than Jasmine Burnett, New Voices Cleveland’s field organizer in the Midwest. In 2010, she led the campaign to take down a SoHo, New York, billboard that proclaimed the most dangerous place for a Black person was the womb, and this year, Burnett was a driving force behind the Cleveland billboard.

Burnett said that it’s not enough to mount defensive campaigns that respond to the propagandistic billboards that increasingly dot urban and mostly Black neighborhoods. What’s necessary is billboard activism that moves beyond reproductive rights’ preoccupation with abortion and, in keeping with a reproductive justice lens, addresses the racism that’s an American bedrock.

“Anti-abortion billboards are an affront and an attack. [In doing the billboards, New Voices Cleveland] wanted to provide other spaces for creative thought, affirmation, and liberation,” said Burnett. “We work for the full health and well-being of Black women and people. For us, full health means having a different image of ourselves, being able to control and discuss our reproduction, and thinking about how we navigate self-determination in the midst of white supremacy.

“There are not many [billboards or other advertising] that talk about Black people’s lives,” Burnett added. “And we wanted our billboards to say, ‘We support your decision and right to parent or not parent. And we care about your life.’”